Sydney, a city that seamlessly blends culture and business, has become the perfect spot for hosting spectacular major events, and remarkable corporate functions. Whether you're organising multi day conferences, team building activities, or business dinners, mastering the art of corporate event planning in Sydney requires careful preparation and meticulous execution.
In this comprehensive guide, you'll discover the essential planning steps to ensuring your events shine just as bright as the Harbour Bridge in Darling Harbour within the bustling corporate event landscape of the city.
Before diving into the details, it's crucial to define clear goals and objectives for your corporate event. What outcomes do you want to achieve, and how will you measure its success?
Every organiser is different and the key metrics they measure change too. It's important to understand what's most important to you. Is it the number of ticket sales, the number of returning guests in the room or perhaps the growth in your database, online channels or social media following?
Identifying your target audience is fundamental to tailor your event to their preferences and needs. Understanding their demographics and expectations will help you create an event that resonates with them.
Consider what elements will provide the most value to both your attendees and your organisation. Whether it's networking opportunities, thought-provoking sessions, or showcasing new products, ensuring your event delivers meaningful results is key.
Establishing a realistic budget is vital to ensure a success without overspending. Allocating funds for various aspects, such as the corporate venue hire, speakers for your seminars, food and drinks packages and more, will help you maintain control of your spend, and understand what you have left over to cover any unexpected expenses.
Corporate functions are perfect opportunities for businesses to take on a sponsorship role, allowing them to draw eyes to the things they might be promoting, such as a new product launch, or simply to create a lasting impression for attendees by maximising exposure of their brand in the venue space.
Sponsorship is also a great way to offset costs, including any private hire company used or even a cocktail party post-event. Partnering with local businesses can help to not only enhance your event's visibility, but also contribute to the success of your event while offering value to sponsors.
There are so many great corporate function venues in Sydney. Selecting the perfect venue space can significantly impact the overall experience of your event. Here are a few of the top venues and spaces in Sydney:
Many of the state of the art venues in Sydney come equipped with everything you need to cater to from larger events and conferences, to smaller meetings, team building events and product launches. There are a few considerations, however, when selecting the perfect venue from the very best corporate function venues in Sydney.
Sydney has an extensive range of corporate venues and event spaces that vary in size, allowing you to choose the perfect venue for your group. Take note of how many guests can be seated in the event space, whilst also considering any breakout rooms or spaces that may be available to use within the venue.
The location is so important when it comes to selecting the ideal venue for your corporate gatherings. Some of the most popular corporate function venues are situation in the heart of Sydney's CBD, but there are also a number of great venues alongside Darling Harbour, Circular Quay and the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge, the iconic Sydney Opera House, and even in Surry Hills too.
Selecting a venue that ticks all the boxes when it comes to access, and is close to either a train station, tram or bus stop, is so important to ensure your attendees can transit in for your event easily.
It's important to make sure that your selected corporate function venue in Sydney has the amenities your event requires. That covers things like an on-site restaurant with dinner services, catering options, audiovisual facilities, breakout event spaces or even a rooftop bar for a cocktail party with stunning views overlooking the city skyline.
If they can't provide all of these elements, consider bringing in external suppliers who are specialists in their service as that may be a great option to ensure you have the very best.
Another factor to consider is the aesthetics of the spaces versus your theming and styling. Having continuity across all elements will help you deliver a seamless and cohesive event, and what better place than starting with the venue.
All of the best corporate function venues across Sydney exude their own style and look. It's important to ensure the look and feel of the venue spaces suit the types of events you are putting on.
Whether you are playing host to your own conference, or perhaps planning a new product launch for one of your clients, curating a detailed run-sheet for the day is a great way to help carve up your sessions and content points.
Strategically plan your break times around breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner if appropriate. This will allow your guests to network, recharge, and absorb the content. There's nothing better than grabbing a quick coffee from a coffee cart during the break period - it's the perfect place to reset before the next session.
All corporate events consist of some form of content, delivered in a myriad of ways, such as guest speakers, a press conference, panel discussions and presentations. Design your content pillars so that they are relevant to your audience, and introduce cutting-edge insights that will be of true value to your guests.
Handpick some of your favourite business event speakers who have a proven track record with public speaking. By selecting the leaders in their respective industry, you can guarantee that the content they will deliver will be insightful and valuable to your audience. You can also have them promote their spot across their networks, helping to bring awareness to your next corporate function.
Something to consider is to nominate a person to act as the MC or chair for the day. They should be someone with a strong personality who is good on stage, and can bring energy into the room between speakers.
Depending on which of the Sydney corporate function venues you select, you may want to incorporate some additional entertainment. This could come in the form of a live performance, a post-event party, an interactive exhibit, or an engaging activity that your guests can take part in.
This can be a particularly good idea for full day events and conferences, helping to break up the content-packed sessions throughout the day.
There are times when the quality (or quantity) of the food and drinks can severely impact the overall guest experience. Whilst the content should be the key focus, ensuring guests are well catered for is important in order to keep them in the corporate function venue and away from wandering the streets of Sydney in search of lunch.
It's important to ensure you have all allergy and dietary requirements covered, the most common being vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free. Asking your guests pre-event is a great way to understand what the mix is for your group. If you have short break times in your schedule, opting for pre-portioned items over self-service large platters is a quick way to speed up getting food to guests.
Having some form of snack area (or snacks on each table) is important, just to curb any cravings. Opting for healthy options such as fruit and nuts are guaranteed to keep your guests full whilst eliminating sugar and energy spikes.
All corporate events in Sydney have to have coffee as part of the offering. It's a city renown for impeccable coffee, and whilst many of the corporate event venues provide an in-house service, you should opt for the best award winning catering.
Coffee carts are perfect for corporate events, meetings and conferences, as they offer guests an extensive range of beverage options to suit all tastes, give clients the opportunity to brand and theme the cart, and they can access most venues in the Sydney CBD and surrounds.
If your event runs through into the evening, or perhaps you have a conference that concludes late in the afternoon, you may want to consider including an alcoholic drinks package. Whilst it may not be for everyone, most corporate function venues will offer some form of cocktail hour and bar service and it's a nice way for your guests to unwind in the event space afterwards before their dinner or restaurant plans.
Your audio visual equipment and technology component must be state of the art. Whether that means using the venues in-house team, or hiring Sydney's best supplier for AV, a technology fail is simply not acceptable these days. It pays to do some research to ensure you select the right corporate function venues that have the latest tech and spec available for your guests.
Once you have locked in your venue, speakers, catering packages and run-sheet, it's now time for you and your team to promote your Sydney corporate function.
Design a visually appealing invitation that incorporates your events theme and purpose. Include important information like which Sydney venue will play host to your event function, the location and how to get there, your guest speakers and what time it commences.
To help you sell tickets and fill seats, determine your ideal buyer personas and develop a number contact target lists. Using information and data points such as the business/company they work for, their job title and function or department they work in, will help you get your invite in front of the right people.
Leverage social media and your owned channels to generate excitement and anticipation for your event. Make sure you share which corporate function venues your events are taking place at, any relevant news or updates, promote what sponsorship packages are still available and you can even give mention to any post-event or after party events that are planned.
If your budget allows, consider launching a paid ads campaign to generate interest and ticket sales. Using platforms such as Meta can help you get your invite in front of your buyer persona, through the use of targeting and re-targeting.
The day of your event has arrived! Everyone is excited and can't wait to get into the room for the first speaker. Here are a few things to keep top of mind to ensure the day and event run smoothly.
Ensure you have a team of staff working the registration table. You want to get guests into the venue space as smoothly and quickly as possible. As host, you should appoint a designated person to tackle any questions your guests have, so be prepared to point out things like wifi connectivity, location of toilets and key break times.
Whether it be a short business meeting, or full day conference, attendee engagement throughout is paramount. Encourage your guests to utilise the venues spaces to break away from the room when they need to get a breath of fresh air, and promote the benefit of networking and connecting with sponsors and other delegates to get the most value from their time at the venue.
Back up microphones, spare batteries, a back-up guest speaker - these are all great things to have your team prepared with should the worst happen and their be a delay in arrival or a tech-fail. Working with the venue if you have an issue in the room is the best piece of advice as they are the experts in venue hire and host countless of events within their venue.
After your event, it's time to evaluate and take on any feedback you've received to make improvements for your future events. You'll be surprised at what you discover.
It's important to gather feedback from your guests, to find out things like whether the venue and space provided was adequate, whether the catering was of high quality, and what they thought of the content and speakers.
Take all of the feedback you've received, and with your team, decide on any action steps for change that can be applied to your upcoming corporate events, meetings and conferences.
Take a look back at the original goals you set during the preparation stage. How did you go? Measure the success against those goals, evaluating attendance, engagement, NPS and other relevant metrics you want to include.
Hosting a successful event in Sydney doesn't just come to down to selecting the best of Sydney's corporate event venues. In fact, it takes meticulous planning, attention to detail, and a commitment to delivering exceptional value to your attendees. Keeping this top of mind will have you organising Sydney corporate events that will be the envy of others.
Make your next event a success by including a coffee cart in your catering mix. Coffee on Cue are specialists in event coffee, working within most of Sydney's leading corporate function venues, who are passionate about bringing people together to network and connect.
We work in most of the leading venues in Sydney and offer a range of packages to suit any requirement.
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